fromCreators:The loss of liberty rarely comes about overnight or in one stroke. In a democracy, that loss is normally a slow process, often pushed along by well-intentioned folks who do not even realize until it is too late.Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

fromConsortiumNews:NBC News’ hiring of former CIA Director John Brennan is the latest in a wave of intelligence community stalwarts being given jobs in the media, raising concerns over conflicts of interests.Indoctrination and Censorship

February 4, 2018

fromLibertyPen/YouTube:Devin Nunes explains the memo he released which details how a fake dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign was deployed by the FBI as a pretense to obtain permission to spy on the Trump campaign.Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

fromTheFreeThoughtProject:A high school track and wrestling star was gunned down by police conducting a welfare check. He was unarmed and merely backing his car out of his own driveway.Police State America

by Jan LaRue. Here’s a question for the mayors and governors who are boycotting North Carolina because of its single-sex public restroom law: “Is your taxpayer-funded, executive office bathroom open to the public, including every Tom, Dick and Harry pretending to be ‘Mary’”? North Carolina enacted a law on March 23 that bans individuals from ... MORE

by Paul Dykewicz.Government failures at
the federal, state and local levels that led to toxic water flowing
from the faucets in Flint, Michigan, spurred the House Oversight
Committee to hold two hearings this week in which the head of the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its former Midwest region
administrator claimed agency officials ... MORE

The judge's Easter thoughts. What is the connection between personal freedom and rising from the dead? When America was in its infancy and struggling to find a culture and frustrated at governance from Great Britain, the word most frequently uttered in speeches and pamphlets and editorials was not "safety" or "taxes" or "peace"; ... MORE

Can computerized cars drive better than we can? The cover story of Time’s March 7 issue makes “the increasingly compelling case for why you shouldn’t be allowed to drive,” claiming that computerized cars are (or, it is hoped, will be) safer drivers than humans, and so the logical thing is to ban humans from driving altogether. The plan is ... MORE

A safer way to travel. The Tesla S is the closest thing to a totally driverless car available now. I had to leave my state to test-drive it. New York's archaic laws forbid taking both hands off the wheel. Once outside New York, the Tesla representative in the passenger seat had me turn on the autopilot. Suddenly, I was doing nothing. The car drove ... MORE

by Brian Doherty. Complete f-ing insanity from the outskirts of the Land of the Free, as reported byMinnesota Star-Tribune, about a former pair of publicans from Minnesota who will be going to court in March facing felony charges for selling Spotted Cow beer at the Maple Tavern in Maple Grove, Minnesota. The former owner and manager (the bar is ... MORE

No wonder Twitter stock is tanking. Twitter yesterday announced it is forming a “Trust and Safety Council,” an effort to “ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.” The council features “safety advocates, academics, and researchers,” “grassroots advocacy organizations” and “community groups,” all of them ... MORE

by Matthew Harwood. If you’ve been listening to various police agencies and their supporters, then you know what the future holds: anarchy is coming—and it’s all the fault of activists. In May, a Wall Street Journal op-ed warned of a “new nationwide crime wave” thanks to “intense agitation against American police departments” over ... MORE

Those "common-sense gun safety laws. Two days after the massacre in San Bernardino, Marco Rubio said something that most gun control supporters probably thought was outrageous. The Florida senator, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told CBS News "none of the major shootings that have occurred in this country ... MORE

“If you’re a terrorist, you want unarmed citizens." If you want to be protected from potential terrorist attacks like the recent massacre in Paris, and suspected domestic terrorist incidents such as the murder of three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood facility and fourteen more at an office party in San Bernardino, you ... MORE

Weighing good and harm. Today the Cato Institute published my monograph “The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control.”
The policy analysis examines several gun control proposals which have
been promoted by the Obama administration and the gun control lobby:
bans on so-called assault weapons; bans on standard magazines;
confiscation; ... MORE

Our liberties are NOT the problem. The tragedy in Paris last Friday has regrettably been employed as a catalyst for renewed calls by governments in western Europe and even in the United States for more curtailment of personal liberties. Those who accept the trade of liberty for safety have argued in favor of less liberty. They want ... MORE

A plea to sacrifice freedom for the empty promise of safety. President Obama is tired of calling for more gun control after every mass shooting, and I am tired of explaining
why that knee-jerk reaction is illogical. But he feels duty-bound to
continue ("each time this happens, I'm going to bring this up," he
says), and I guess I do too. Last night ... MORE

Imparting values along with knowledge. Many public primary and secondary schools are dangerous places. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2012, there were about 749,200 violent assaults on students. In the 2011-12 academic ... MORE

But do option-reducing regulators care? Public Health England (PHE), a government agency, recently published a detailed report on
electronic cigarettes that describes them as far less dangerous than
the conventional kind and recommends them as a harm-reducing
alternative. "Encouraging smokers who cannot or do not want to stop
smoking ... MORE